Bird's Eye View: Part Four

You can’t solve a problem on the

Same level of consciousness that created the problem.

Einstein

…I can rise above the battleground in my mind…

Here I find peace. Here I find safety.

Here I see innocence and there is

No need to judge.

A Course in Miracles

(paraphrase)

I promised that this last installment on the Bird’s Eye View perspective would be more practical. It would be described from where we actually live and breathe. Here’s a typical example from my own life.

I was raised in a fundamentalist, Christian worldview. My family went to church three times a week – Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday night – without fail, unless we were sick… like with a fever. I remember that The Wizard of Oz periodically came on The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday evenings. On those days, before we left for church, I would be able to watch the first part of the movie – which was in black and white, if you remember – but would invariably have to leave to go back to church before everything showed up in living color. I was grown before I ever saw the glistening, gleam of the Emerald City. True story.

The key words here are black and white. My sisters and I were raised within a literal, black and white level of consciousness. In fundamentalist Christianity, at least from my experience with it, life was divided into the good, the right, the Godly – and – the bad, the wrong and the un-Godly. Embedded within this mindset is an assumption that if you choose the right, the good and the Godly side of the polarity, you will be rewarded. And if you choose, the bad, the wrong and the un-Godly side of the polarity you will be punished. We call this a dualistic mindset and in Myss’ metaphor of the condo building, living out of a dualistic mindset is indicative of her experience on the street level of the building. Myss found herself in the midst of a set of very uncomfortable competing variables – the honking horns, the yelling cab drivers, the stench from the garbage, the August heat rising up from the steaming sidewalks. It was Caroline up against the world. And that up-close-and-personal experience was very, very uncomfortable.

Now, let me tell you, being raised within a dualistic mindset based on reward and punishment, especially if you are wired to want to do it right, to do it perfectly, to try as hard as you can to be a good and faithful Christian – will do something to your head… not to mention, your heart and your soul. My sister, Robyn and I can still have confessional conversations with each other about how we have gotten sucked back into that unconscious, primitive way of thinking. To this day, we both carry around with us that old fundamentalist assumption to try to live life perfectly. It’s a killer. No…. really. Trying to live your life without ever making a mistake – as if we could ever really know what that might look like, much less then be able to do it – sucks the life out of you. It’s exhausting. It’s deadening. And… it’s impossible.

So, here’s the shift from the street level to the penthouse from my own life. Even though I still carry around with me that Inner Little Girl who is always trying to be good and do it right – and even though I still carry around with me the Inner Fundamentalist Preacher who is constantly pointing out when she is failing – that dualistic struggle is no longer all of who I am. I have learned enough by this time in my life to recognize when my Little Girl has fallen under the Fundamentalist Preacher’s spell again. I recognize this by how I, that would be my Little Girl feels when I am caught in his snare. My stomach hurts. My chest feels tight. Emotionally, I feel horrible. I feel guilty and ashamed and afraid. I feel anxious. I feel like a hopeless failure… again.

When I notice that I am feeling all of that is when I try to make these two parts of myself more conscious. I recognize that one part of me is the hypervigilant critic, my Inner Fundamentalist Preacher, and the other part of me is the Inner Little Girl who is so earnestly trying to do as he says. These two parts always go together. You can’t have one without the other. But if I slow the dynamic down, rather than just unconsciously repeating their habitual dance with each other, I can sense what each part of the polarity is feeling. I can either intuit what they are feeling or I can actually ask each one to tell me, as I listen with openness, curiosity and empathy.

I start by addressing the Fundamentalist Preacher. “Hello, welcome. I sense that you are here and that you want something. Can you tell me more about yourself and what you want?” That part will then begin to tell me how important it is for Little Nancy to behave perfectly. If she doesn’t, she will be in big trouble. The powers-that-be will be angry with her. Making a mistake carries dire consequences. She could be shunned, tossed out of the fold. She would be risking full abandonment, not to mention eternal damnation. He, my Inner Fundamentalist Preacher so does not want that to happen to her. Inside himself he is feeling very, very anxious. He feels like it is his job to get her to do what is right to save her life. His intention is to protect her, not to be cruel to her. And the truth is, that was what motivated those fundamentalist evangelists, too as they preached hell, fire and damnation from the pulpit when I was little. They were genuinely afraid for the safety of our souls.

Now understanding that my Inner Preacher’s intentions have always been to protect Little Nancy, I allow my heart to open up to him. And as he feels my empathy towards him, he calms down.

I do the same with my Inner Earnest Little Girl. I welcome her and tell her that I want to hear what she has come to say. She explains that no matter how hard she tries to do things right, to be a good girl, it is never enough to satisfy the Inner Preacher. She always ends up feeling bad and wrong and guilty and shameful. This is exhausting. She can’t ever fully meet his demands and yet she can’t stop trying. My heart opens as I reflect her feelings back to her. I tell her that I understand that she must be feeling overwhelmed and stuck in some sort of never-ending feedback loop. I reassure her that I am with her now And I understand her pain.

By being fully present with them and genuinely listening to them, I expand into a space big enough to hold them both. And it is that expansive space that Myss experienced on the penthouse balcony of the condo building. From that perspective, from that level of consciousness, I am no longer a single variable bumping up against all the other single variables in my world, each one scrambling for survival. I am now the open space that holds them all together, recognizing that each one is earnestly, however misguided playing its part within the larger whole.

Those unconscious, undeveloped parts of me – of any of us – don’t die off. They continue to live inside of us and remain available as options for our present-day lives. When I was a child, both the Inner Fundamentalist Preacher and the Inner Little Girl in me played their parts, to the best of their abilities to keep me safe. And for that, I can be ever so grateful. But now, as an adult when I fall back into their unconscious symbiosis, they block me from my awareness of Love’s Presence in my life. To experience that Presence, I have to consciously choose to connect with them and with the Love that holds us all. And when I do, amazingly, Life shows up in living color. And I see how beautiful all of it is, as it really is.